


Karma

by Princex_N



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Guys. Pals. Im sorry, Heavy Angst, Hurt, Manipulation, Past Character Death, Survivor Guilt, The Suffering Game Speculation, Trials
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-24
Updated: 2016-11-24
Packaged: 2018-09-01 20:10:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8636569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princex_N/pseuds/Princex_N
Summary: Some familiar faces show up in Wonderland, but no one is really happy to see them.Taako finishes it. Magnus gets hurt. Merle is confused.





	

**Author's Note:**

> i got very excited about this, and i hate this and myself and i pray to god that nothing like this happens in canon bc my soul will leave my real earth body if it does

Taako feels a little like he can't breathe. 

"You," says a stony faced woman near the front. 

"Me," he agrees, a little dazedly. He doesn't really know what he's supposed to do here? He hates this place. He thought that he was done facing ghosts. 

The room is dead quiet, kind of odd considering it's filled with Taako and forty other people. 

"What? Exactly is going on here?" Taako asks finally, he thinks he's doing a pretty good job of pulling off an unaffected facade, years of practice will get you that, but he's not really sure he wants to actually  _stay_ here any longer than he absolutely has to. 

"You have to get through us to get out." Another woman says, the child on her hip points at the door at the back of the crowd. 

Taako tries to take a breath, "I don't suppose you lovely folks would mind letting me through easy?" 

A humorless laugh scatters through the crowd. He sighs, "Didn't think so." 

His grip on the Umbra Staff tightens, it feels heavy and unwieldy in his hand, he doesn't want to do this. 

"You killed us." A man says, a ripple of agreement follows his statement. 

'It wasn't my fault,' Taako thinks, but he doesn't say a thing. He's been repeating it to himself ever since Refuge, but standing there with them in front of him, the words feel cheap. Useless. He's the one who fed them the food that killed them. It wasn't his fault, but at the same time, it may as well have been. 

He tries to take a deep breath, it doesn't get very far before stalling in his chest. 

He can't fucking believe this place. 

"I had four kids," someone calls out. The shouts don't stop. "I was about to get married", "I wanted to grow up and be like you", "My wife just had a baby". 

This sucks. 

Taako steels himself. He raises the Umbra Staff. He's done this before, right? Should be easy this time. 

He feels sick just thinking it. 

The first spell he fires elicits a roar of pain and outrage, and Taako thinks back to the first cries of panic that had rang out all those years ago and has to choke back a wave of nausea. 

This isn't real. That is over and done with, and it wasn't his fault. This isn't real. 

Some of them come at him, he blasts them back. He's tempted to close his eyes but he doesn't. He doesn't block out the sound of pain and fear and children crying. It's not real. This isn't real.

He finishes it. 

The room smells like burning meat and garlic. Taako stumbles over the mess and to the door, he vomits just before he reaches the threshold. The burn of it is familiar. He closes the door behind him but can't get rid of the fucking  _smell_ of it all. 

He's alone in the empty hallway the three of them had been in before they'd been split up. He takes a while to try to calm down and breathe, and he knows that he's supposed to wait here for the others to get done. 

He manages it for just long enough to get a fucking hold of himself, and then decides  _fuck it_. Fuck this  _trial_ , fuck this  _place_ , fuck fucking  _everything_. 

He blasts through the door to the next room without a second thought. 

* * *

He can't do it. 

It's not her and he knows it, but he can't do it. 

"Julia, please," he begs. He's backed up against a wall, and he doesn't think it's actually going to do any good. It hasn't in the past however long he's been in here. She doesn't care because it's not her, but  _fuck_ , it looks like her and it sounds like her and Magnus can't fucking bring himself to hurt her.

"Come on, Mags. Not even a little bit of a fight?" She teases, and  _god_ it really does sound just like her. "The door's right there." 

"You know I can't." 

He doesn't want to look at her because it's wrong. It's not her. Looking at her now, it's only going to ruin his memory of her. He can't quite manage it. 

"You could have saved us," she says, almost contemplatively, "Didn't have the fight in you back then either, huh?" 

"I wasn't there, I couldn't have helped it." 

She laughs, throwing her head back the same way she always used to. "You really believe that?" she asks, "We both know that's not quite true." 

The phrase is one that he's repeated to himself countless times ever since that day, but she's right, he still can't quite make himself believe the words.

"Don't you think it's time to make amends?" she asks. He wants to say no, but he can't make his voice work. She nods for him, "I think so too." 

She makes to move forward again, the door explodes inwards. 

"Mags?" Taako's voice calls out. The smoke clear and Magnus watches the elf stumble into the room, and halt as he takes in the scene in front of him. 

Magnus, curled in on himself, cradling a shaking hand against a bleeding wound in his stomach. Julia, standing straight and mocking, adze in hand. 

Taako doesn't look like he's doing too good either. He looks shaky and sick, pale as hell and his hair and clothes are mess, but the moment he sees what's going on, his face goes void of emotion. 

"You're not supposed to be here," Julia says, turning to face him fully, "We were busy." 

Taako's head tilts to the side, his ears are turned back. "Were you?" He asks, like they're having a casual conversation. Then he shrugs, "Not anymore though, it looks like." 

There's no warning before he raises the Umbra Staff and casts Scorching Ray directly at her. Magnus shouts, "No!" despite himself. It's not her, it's  _not her_ , he reminds himself forcefully, but it doesn't help. He forces himself to stay still. It isn't her it isn't her it isn't her. 

Taako doesn't have any of the qualms that Magnus had. He marches right up to Julia, where she's struggling to get up from the floor, he points the Umbra Staff directly at her forehead. He doesn't hesitate before casting the spell again. 

Magnus makes himself look away. 

When he looks back, it doesn't look a thing like her. It doesn't look like much of anyone anymore. 

_It wasn't her it wasn't her it wasn't her._

He's distantly aware of the fact that he's crying, it wasn't her and he'd lost her a long time ago and he knows this but it still hurts like he's lost her a second time. 

"Hey, you're okay." Taako says, he pries Magnus' arm away from where it's pressing viciously into the wound in his stomach, Magnus can feel the elf shaking. "It's fine, it wasn't real." 

Magnus reaches out and drags him into a hug. "It wasn't her," Magnus says aloud, and Taako nods. 

"Nope, wasn't her at all." Taako agrees, "It wasn't ou-  _you_ _r_ fault." 

"You don't even know what happened with her." 

"I know you." Taako says simply, his shaking hands finally come around to grip at the back of Magnus' shirt. "It wasn't your fault." 

"It wasn't our faults." 

Taako hesitates, then nods firmly. "It wasn't our faults," he agrees. 

Magnus sniffs, pressing his face against Taako's shoulder and forcing himself to calm down more. "Where's Merle?"

Taako shrugs, "Probably in the next room." He backs up as Magnus finally releases him and attempts to stand. "You sure you're good to go?" 

"Yeah," Magnus lies. He's pretty sure that neither of them are good to go, but this place is bad news and they need to get Merle. "Let's go get Merle." 

* * *

Merle doesn't know what he had been expecting to find in the room. 

It definitely hadn't been his daughter though. 

"Mavis?" he asks incredulously, "What are you doing here?" 

She turns to give him a look that is equal parts hurt and pissed off. She almost definitely got that look from her mother. 

"You left." She says simply. 

And Merle isn't clueless. He knows that  _something's_ fishy about all this shit; it doesn't make any sense for Mavis to be here. But, there she is. Maybe it makes sense that she found her way here somehow? It doesn't make sense, but, there she is.

"I mean, yeah? But that was, not really what I asked?" He says, "What is going on here?" 

"The door's behind me." Mavis says, her voice is cold. "You didn't have any trouble finding the door all those years ago, though." 

Merle's chest clenches despite himself. He doesn't quite regret leaving. Obviously, since it wasn't even what the chalice had decided to try and tempt him with back in Refuge. But, even though he doesn't regret leaving, he does kind of regret the side effect of it hurting his kids. Him leaving hadn't been about them. He tries to make up for it in the ways he can, but even he knows it's not enough. 

He blows out a heavy breath, "Kiddo," he starts, but she cuts him off. 

"No, you don't get to call me that." She says angrily, "You  _left_ , you don't get to keep coming back and acting like you're our dad." 

And then, to add to all the weird bullshit that's been going on ever since Merle walked into this room, since he walked into this  _building_ really, she pulls out a pocketknife. 

He recognizes it. He'd given it to her not long before he'd left, to protect herself if she needed it. 

"Alright, what the hell-" he starts, but is once again, interrupted, this time by an explosion that blows out the door that he'd walked through initially. Merle turns around to see Magnus and Taako stumble through the smoking hole in the wall. "What the fuck." Merle doesn't really have any time to react to anything before Magnus is running past him, delivering a solid blow with his warhammer to Merle's fucking  _daughter_. " _Pan_ , what the _fuck_ are you doing?!" Taako gets in his way before he can intervene or survey the damage. 

"Stop! It isn't real." Taako says, gripping Merle's shoulders, "It's not really them, it's a trick." 

"How the hell do you know?" Merle asks, a little crazed. 

"It's not." Taako's voice is firm and uncharacteristically serious. The elf's ears are pressed flat against his skull and Merle can feel him shaking, and he's inclined to believe him, but still, when Mavis lets out a choked little noise of pain, Merle starts to pull out of Taako's grip. 

For a reward, he gets bodily lifted up and dragged out of the room. 

"Put me down," Merle demands, more outraged by the indignity than anything. He has no idea what the fuck is going on. 

"It's just another trial," Taako says, setting Merle down as Magnus walks out of the room. Merle considers carrying on the argument, because what the fuck honestly, but Taako is still shaking and when Merle looks at Magnus, it's obvious that the human has been crying, and there's a bleeding wound across his stomach that he carefully moves around. 

"Alright," Merle says finally, but makes a  _definite_ mental note to get in contact with Mavis and Mookie the second they get out of this place. He waves Magnus over, "Let me heal that before those assholes show up." 

Merle's barely activated the spell when those assholes show up. 

"Well, that wasn't... exactly how you were supposed to get through that." One of them says, "Does that count as cheating?" 

"I think we'll give them a pass,  _just_ this time," says the other. "Next time though, I don't think we'll be so forgiving." 

The door at the end of the hallway opens. Merle finishes healing Magnus' wound. 

"Are you two okay to go on?" Merle asks. _He_ does not feel particularly ready to go on, he would like some time to process what the fuck just happened, personally. Magnus and Taako both lie and say yes, despite the fact that they still clearly look like shit. This place is running them into the ground, and Merle wonders how much longer the three of them will be able to take it. 

But he supposes that this is the kind of lifestyle that he signed up for when he left. 

The three of them walk through the door. 

**Author's Note:**

> look. i'm dying.   
> [this is what an adze is btw](http://www.bristol-design.co.uk/a85_carvingadze.jpg)  
> [my tumblr](http://www.princex-n.tumblr.com)


End file.
